MSI NX8600GTS-T2D256E-HD-OC Graphics Card Review. Page 11

Nvidia GeForce 8600 GTS didn’t become an equal rival to ATI Radeon X1950 Pro, but we all knew that overclocked modifications of this graphics adapter are destined to come one day. Today we are going to introduce to you one of these cards and will find out how much faster it is than the original solution. We will also touch upon the overclocking potential of Nvidia G84 based graphics accelerators in general.

Performance in Third-Person Shooters

Hitman: Blood Money

The cards behave almost as they did on the older testbed, equaling each other. The overclocked frequencies of the MSI card do not bring in any advantages. 1280x1024 is still the highest comfortable resolution.

Tomb Raider: Legend

The GeForce 8600 GTS does not surpass the Radeon X1950 Pro in average speed anymore, but is still ahead of it in terms of minimum speed and thus suits better for playing this game.

The MSI card is 6-7% ahead of the reference card, which has no practical value for the gamer. Our overclocking increases the gap to 18% but this has little effect on the minimum speed which is a more important factor here than the average frame rate. Full comfort can only be achieved by replacing your mainstream-class graphics card with something better, like a GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB.

Splinter Cell: Double Agent

We try to get the best quality of graphics from each game, so we chose HDR in favor of FSAA and benchmarked the cards with anisotropic filtering only.

Having a considerably higher computing power the Radeon X1950 Pro is beaten by the GeForce 8600 GTS anyway. The latter’s performance isn’t exactly brilliant, yet the average frame rate is never lower than 30fps (35fps with the overclocked card from MSI). You won’t have full comfort because the minimum of speed is still too low, below the critical mark of 25fps, yet the game is playable and with the highest possible image quality.